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It's common knowledge that fisherman can earn a fortune but giant haul made by a group of Alaskan fishing boats last week surprised fishermen, regulators and seafood processors alike.
In just one afternoon, 8 to 10 boats hauled 10,000 tons of sac roe herring and at $550 a ton it works out at around $5.5 million dollars. That's $500,000 per boat! Link
What celebrities would look like if they were from Oklahoma. I hope I don't offend anyone from Oklahoma with this post.
This boat thief came well prepared.
According to research, 13 million Britons suffer from nomophobia ('no mobile phobia') - the fear being out of mobile phone contact.
Keeping in touch with friends or family is the main reason why they are so wedded to their mobile.
More than one in two said this is why they never switch it off.
One in ten said they needed to be contactable at all times because of their jobs, while 9 per cent said that having their phone switched off made them anxious.
Experts say nomophobia could affect up to 53 per cent of mobile phone users, with 48 per cent of women and 58 per cent of men questioned admitting to experiencing feelings of anxiety when they run out of battery or credit, lose their phone or have no network coverage.
I think I'm one of those 13 million although I'm not concerned about people not being able to contact me, I'm more concerned about running out of battery. Hence the need to carry a pocketful of batteries or two phones! How sad!
After being with TypePad for almost 5 years I've decided that it's time for a change and I'm going to make the move to Wordpress. There are a few reasons for wanting to make the switch. One reason is that it's very flexible and much faster than Typepad. Another reason is that I've grown tired of the existing design and layout of AWV and I think a switch to a new, more featured design will give me extra motivation.
There's been a lot to weigh up such as whether or not I can move existing posts to Wordpress, what will happen to my PageRank and what will happen to those who find my site via search engines.
Whilst it's possible to move my posts to Wordpress I think it's easiest to make a fresh start. My TypePad account is paid for until early 2009 so the old posts would remain there for sometime. One reason why there's probably not much point in spending time moving posts is that Google has listed my 16,000+ with the domain 'xo.typepad.com' so visitors would still be going to the TypePad blog.
To help with the transition I've come across a service that can offer 301 redirects that will help search engines find the new blog.
One part of the transition that I'm undecided on is what design to go with. I'm very tempted to go with a magazine-style theme similar to Mimbo or Wordpress Themes Market - Magazine Theme. Their layout is different to a normal blog and either section off the content or categorise it. This layout would be a complete change for me and whilst I like it, I'm not sure if everyone else does.
Before making a decision I thought I'd consult my readers. So, what do you think of the magazine style? Should I go for that style or stick with the regular blog format? Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.
The annual April Fool's list returns. At the time of posting there are only a few listed but you can expect a lot more. Unfortunately I'm not creative enough to think of anything.
Techcrunch is reporting that the 10 millionth article has been published on Wikipedia. Since formally launching on 15 January 2001, the 10 million articles have been written across 250 different languages (language breakdown here) with English being the most popular with 2.3 million articles.
The 10 millionth article was about a Hungarian biography of of 16th century painter called Nicholas Hilliard (English version here).
I'm sure there's room for one more.
Japanese scientists and origami masters are hoping to launch a paper airplane from space and learn from its trip back to Earth.
Shinji Suzuki, a professor at Tokyo University's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, believes that a successful flight from space by an origami plane could have far-reaching implications for the design of re-entry vehicles or space probes for upper atmospheric exploration.
In a test outside Tokyo in early February, a prototype about 2.8 inches long and 2 inches wide survived Mach 7 speeds and broiling temperatures up to 446 degrees Fahrenheit in a hypersonic wind tunnel — conditions meant to approximate what the plane would face entering Earth's atmosphere.
Having survived the 12-second test with no major damage or burns, the tiny plane theoretically could get back to Earth because re-entry from outer space involves passing through several layers that last only a few seconds each, said Osamu Imamura, a scientist who works with Suzuki.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, accepted it Wednesday for three years of feasibility studies and promised up to $300,000 in funding per year.
[via]
Yup, you read right.
Ganvie (meaning: 'the collectivity of those who found peace at last') is a lake village in Benin, lying in Lake Nokoué, near Cotonou. The village has a population of around 20-30,000, contains around 3,000 stilted buildings and is probably the largest lake village in Africa.
The village dates back to the sixteenth or seventeenth century [source] and was built to save people from slavery.
When the Dan-Homey kings armies were capturing people in the countryside to sell in the Portuguese slave trade, the people of Ganvie were saved from slavery by the Dan-Homey religious traditions...they were forbidden to attack communities on the water. Link
The people in this unique fishing village live exclusively from fishing (along with a little tourism), use pirogues (canoes) and have a system of underwater plantings that form fences to trap and breed fish.
According to this site there are only 'one and a half bits' of dry land in Ganvie. The full bit of land is the site of the school and the half bit will be a cemetery once enough dry ground has been laid to start burying people in it. The site has more information as well as photos.
How the people of the west African nation of Benin buy petrol. [via]
And shrouded in bacon. Mmmmm.
556 HTML and 389 PDF movie screenplays. The site hasn't been updated since October 2006 so you won't find any new movies. [via]
A fine collection of Photoshop disasters. There were so many good ones it was hard to choose one for this post. [via]
Thomas Edison has long been considered the father of sound but a recording from 1860 has been demonstrated that features a woman singing.
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's 1860 phonautogram was made 17 years before Edison received a patent for the phonograph and 28 years before an Edison associate captured a snippet of a Handel oratorio on a wax cylinder, a recording that until now was widely regarded by experts as the oldest that could be played back.
The recording will be presented on Friday along with recordings made in 1853 and 1854. Those first experiments included attempts to capture the sounds of a human voice and a guitar, but Scott’s machine was at that time imperfectly calibrated.
The New York Times has the 1860 recording.
The World’s first ever game of tennis on water involving two of the World’s highest profile tennis players, Rafael Nadal of Spain and Serena Williams of USA took place in Miami, Florida on March 24th, 2008 during a Sony Ericsson Open tennis preview event.
A collection of pictures showing the results of ice rain in Southern China.
Muxtape is an easy way to create and share mixtape online. SImply upload your tracks and share the link.
These Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing weigh in at a heart-attack inducing 2,900 calories, have 182 grams of fat and no doubt taste pretty damn good. It's the worst food out of this list and this very similar one.
Another one here.
Some of these surprised me. [via]
A map showing Buzz Aldrin's and Neil Armstrong's moonwalk. [via]
This is the view from a camera attached to an elephant. Cameras were attached to four different elephants during the filming of a documentary.
One carried a "trunk-cam" - a device resembling a huge log concealing a camera which could be held in its trunk and dangled close to the ground.
Another had a "tusk-cam" hooked over its tusk. The elephants moved so steadily that the images are pin-sharp. Other log-cams were left on the forest floor.
The Daily Mail has more photos.
"Beautiful and creepy, this huge hole in the ground situated in Darvaz, Uzbekistan was once the site of a gas drilling site where 35 years ago, geologists discovered a massive cavern filled with an unknown gas. It was claimed that since there was a danger of poisonous gases in the cavern, the drilling company decided to ignite the gases before proceeding with the drilling.
The hole has been burning ever since."
Just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder. [via]
A comparison of old versions of websites such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple. [via]
A German website has taken photos of over 100 German food products and compared them with the photos found on their packaging. [via]
According to EnglishRussia, the driver of this Lada had just popped into the newsagent for some ciggies when a lorry toppled over and crushed it. More photos here.
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| Lucky Family in Brazil Nearly Dies in a Freak Accident |
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More here (w/ another photo)
Can you tell the difference between a 320kbps and a 128kbps MP3?
A police force in the US has converted a VW Beetle into a police car. The 1973 "bug-erceptor" only has a top speed of 70mph so won't be used in any chases. Instead the car will be used mostly as a public relations tool for the department, making appearances in parades and at school events.
The car was seized in a DUI case and boasts a new paint job, sheriff's decals and tags, a siren, radio, barred rear side windows, a side-mounted spotlight and police lights.
[via]
As usual, the Threadless sale has been extended a few days. They've also added some new t-shirts and reprints.
This video is almost unbelievable. Using a 're-generative' powder made from pig's bladders, a man has regrown the tip of a finger that he lost 3 years ago. A transcript of the video is here.
This three-minute video morphs between images from 500 years of female portraits in Western art. [via]
French doctors had already succeeded in performing the world's first partial face transplant back in 2005 and they have now succeeded in performing the world's first full-dace transplant.
Pascal Coler - a modern-day Elephant Man - had been horribly disfigured by Von Recklinghausen's disease, a rare genetic disorder.
The controversial operation, which involved replacing Mr Coler's face with that of a dead donor, took 16 hours, and required tissues, nerves, arteries and veins being attached to the patient's face.
The operation has revolutionised his life and a year after the surgery, Mr Coler is now free of the disease that at the age of six saw tumours begin to grow on his face.
The Daily Mail has more photos.
The toad in the video is a Surinam toad. [via]
A selection of the world's most expensive foods including potatoes that cost €500/kg, tea that costs $3,000/kg and a beer that costs £500/bottle. [via]
Chinese phones may not be as technologically advanced as some other phones (e.g. 5mp+ cameras, HSDPA) but they are excelling in other areas. This phone comes with a whopping 32800mAh battery which can provide 666 days of standby time and 3-5 days of talk time! This means that you can go for months at a time without having to recharge it. I could really use a battery that size in my phones.
Just Another Mobile Phone Blog has got a feature list as well as more photos.
A weeks-old Galapagos Giant Tortoise crawls in front of its 70-year-old mother "Nigrita" inside an enclosure at Zurich zoo. [via]
Raw footage from Monterrey, Mexico show a bus colliding with a falling road sign during high winds. Six people were injured in the accident. [via]
Famed Japanese jazz pianist Yosuke Yamashita has expressed his burning passion for music by setting his piano on fire.
On a Japanese beach in front of 500 spectators and wearing a firesuit, Yamashita played an improvised jazz piece for 10 minutes before all the strings were burnt out or snapped and the piano went quiet.
This is the second time in 35 years that he has played a burning piano. Link
[via]
